Building a community for PlanBig

February 14, 2012 2 Comments

I recently did an interview for PlanBig, for those not familiar it’s a place for sharing ideas and making them happen. Kind of like a Kickstarter or Pozible without the crowdfunding aspect. The video touches on how to build a community around your brand, so it’s community from a business sense and differs in some ways to how I would approach a community like Socialmelb for instance. I didn’t know the questions or what I had to do beforehand so while my top five tips are mentioned, I’m sure I could find another top five with more time. It was also raining outside (ah, Melbourne) so excuse the bad hair day!

If you don’t have time to watch, here’s the tips:

  • Make your first action now
  • Encourage your community to meet offline face-to-face
  • Remain nimble and small in your culture
  • Think like a publisher
  • Maintain a curious and beginner-like mind

Filed under Comment Tagged with , , , ,

Attention Australian startup founders

February 3, 2012 14 Comments

Edit 7/2/12: Enter madeinoz.org!

Someone was recently chatting to me about the lack of awareness of Australian startups by VCs (even local ones), with poor national press coverage doing us no favours. I agree with this to a large extent and as result have been posting more about our startups here and also over on The Fetch Blog. However, I also think Australian startups need to stand up and own the fact that they’re Australian. I think we can often be obsessed with trying to appear global and appeal to certain markets, like the US, rather than pushing our own story and roots. What I’ve witnessed in other startup communities around the globe is that they have a real pride and bond around origin – particularly their city. New York is perhaps the best example of this – and likely a result of the ever-present dominance from the West Coast. ‘Internet Made in NYC‘, which lists all the NYC-based startups is one of the most useful startup resources to have. It’s visited by job seekers, journos and investors alike.

You can read more about the list in the FAQ at the bottom but the following will give you an idea about the structure.

“What do these companies have in common?

  1. They are mostly coded in nyc
  2. They have 10K+ people use or visit their site monthly
  3. They display “Made in NYC” as prominently as its copyright — and it links to this page (http://nytm.org/made). [Optionally, (a) spell out “New York City” and/or (b) precede with an adverb/verb]“

No denying where Skillshare is based

In Australia, I believe a crucial step in evolving our ecosystem is bonding cross-city and providing transparency around who’s here. We should create our own version of ‘Made in NYC’ as ‘Made in Oz’, and pop links in footers everywhere! It’s good to see leaders like 99designs have kicked things off.

99designs is "Proudly Australia" (although only on the .com.au domain)

Perhaps we could even add some green and gold into the mix… ;)

So cheesy it's back in fashion

And one for good measure – 6wunderkinder wearing the badge:

A proud Berlin-based startup 6 Wunderkinder (check out Wunderlist & Wunderkit)

Thoughts, commentary, discussion?

Have a good weekend.

Cheers,

KK

Filed under Comment Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Sydney’s startup ecosystem visualised

December 19, 2011 3 Comments

I’ve recently started posting about what’s going on in Australia’s startup community, both here and on The Fetch blog. This involves regular featuring of startups that are piquing my interest and also some curatorial pieces on the coworking spaces and as of today, a list on the incubators and accelerators across the country.

There’s been a promising response and while I need to add a few more in, I’ve just received an amazing map of Sydney’s startup scene thanks to Sebastien Eckersley-Maslin (founder of BlueChilli). I love me some public-transport-esque #mapporn… check it out below and/or click to enlarge. Nice work guys! Would love to see one created in other cities.

Filed under Comment Tagged with , , , , , , , , , ,

Melbourne’s Top 100

December 8, 2011 11 Comments

Be sure to grab a copy or peek of The Age’s (melbourne) magazine tomorrow as the annual Top 100 list for 2011 is out and a panel of judges deemed me worthy for inclusion!

The Top 100 (which is apparently not ordered but for the record, I’m number 66) is a compilation of Melbourne’s most influential, inspirational, provocative and creative people for 2011. This year includes everyone from shadow ministers, philanthropists and authors, to basketballers, retailers and architects. I’m in there for creating The Fetch and Socialmelb, and it’s feels all warm and fuzzy to see my dedication and work in the digital communities recognised. I’d obviously like to thank everyone who’s been involved with either endeavour this year and beyond as I couldn’t do it without you. It’s such a pleasure to know and be around amazing people, and I’m truly grateful for the support and company. This coverage will be a nice opportunity to drive awareness about what’s happening in our industries and also a great driver for making what we offer better. It somehow makes every late night or weekend spent plugging away at my MacBook organising stuff worth it and I’m now wondering what I could do if I freed up my workload to focus more.

I’m particularly excited about where my new venture Cloud Peeps could go with helping people connect and find work/projects (beyond community management).

So, stay tuned, thanks again and here’s to 2012.

KK

P.S. If you’re new here, and interested in what’s happening in Melbourne’s digital, business and creative communities (events, jobs, local profiles, spaces and more), please subscribe at http://thefetch.org and follow us on @thefetchmelb.

Filed under Comment, Journal Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , ,

Uncovering the Berlin web community

October 10, 2011 6 Comments

Last month I was lucky enough to check out the creative and digital scenes in Berlin as part of the Grand Tour. As a city with a gay mayor, in a country with a female chancellor and a polarising past, I knew I’d like it. I started researching before I landed and was soon surprised, not to mention rather excited, with the sheer volume of stuff happening. Unlike San Francisco, which tends to be a bit tech-community myopic – I found the beauty of Berlin lay in its diversity. You’ll find more artists, vintage store owners, local-movement foodies, late-20′s students and pop-up venue instigators than tech entrepreneurs. It almost reminded me of Melbourne but about five times less expensive. That’s right, you can find rooms as cheap as €200 per month so it’s definitely an attractive place to startup. Plus, you can always squat for free – it’s the Berlin way. ;) However, salaries are adjusted to the affordable cost of living. One of the sticking points of Berlin is the comparatively low remuneration – if you’re thinking about staying long-term, be prepared to be greeted with a salary of what’s often less than a graduate in Australia.

Something important to note is that German web workers are moving toward doing most business in English, so don’t be afraid if your speaking skills are non-existent. There were people I met who’d lived there for three or four years, and still couldn’t pull out more than a danke schön. Berliners are also really passionate about their craft and it won’t take you long to figure out if a product was founded in the city.

The often spotted Berlin website credit. This one's courtesy of 6Wunderkinder.

Now for some background reading…

First up, don’t think Germany is all Samwer-esque US clones – there’s a lot of progressive stuff happening and the German community is keen to embrace an “anti-copycat revolution”. One of the must-read posts, which is now a few months old, is Founders STAND UP! The anti-copycat revolution starts now.

It also features a neat visualisation of original startups and their HQs:

There are also two local content offerings doing a stellar job of covering the community:

  • Silicon Allee, which was started by a couple of expats has a frequently-updated blog and runs monthly meetups
  • TechBerlin does a great job of curating news and Skype video interviews with founders

Events

I ended up getting to my fair share of events. Hello Etsy was a special summit on small business and sustainability, and featured the best name tags ever. CoHackDay at coworking space co.up was a fun cross-discipline hack weekend. Hack and Tell was a nice insight into what’s being created, with monthly demo evenings. The social business innovation conference, CoThinkTank was a more-corporate style event and I particularly enjoyed hearing from frog design. Fatsix by Third Wave Berlin was a chilled weekly Friday drinks event and finally, Open Coffee Club was a #socialmelb-style coffee meetup but with more males and tech entrepreneurs! I also couldn’t help myself, I ended up coorganising something while there via kicking off Berlin Travel Massive.

Travel Massive at St Oberholz

  • For a what’s on in tech perspective, the well-curated Startup Digest is worth viewing. You can check out archived emails online here
  • For another point of call, Tobias Jordans just created a fantastic Google Plus update with comprehensive event listings
  • We’re also looking to launch The Fetch Berlin later to represent the city’s breadth, so stay tuned

Where to cowork

When you hear the word ‘cowork’, think Berlin. Due to the low rents, less-stringent building regulations and mid-rise properties in abundance – there are countless places to work out of. The city is also home to the best online coworking publication going, Deskmag where the editors work out of the co.up space. They also created the useful Deskwanted, which is a marketplace for desk hunters and coworking spaces. Worth the view if you looking for something in one spot.

  • For a well-rounded introduction, check out this post: Berlin – Europe’s coworking capital
  • Don’t bother much with the coworking wiki as the info is outdated. For instance, there isn’t a Hub in Berlin
  • St Oberholz, put simply, is the Red Rock Café of Europe! This double-storey, beautiful and relaxed venue is jam-packed full of power points,  MacBooks and relatively-stable free WiFi. This month, they’re also expanding into a more formal coworking space on the upstairs levels and have a hilarious blog worth a look. If the net is playing up or you want somewhere quieter, I suggest heading over to Café Hilde.
  • One of my favourite options was the multi-storey Betahaus. This place is coworking on steroids and features numerous spaces (like Jay’s Open Design City), events, upcomers and a cool cafe down the bottom. Just buy some mint tea and a bean burrito to enjoy the large light-filled venue and complimentary guest WiFi.

Betahaus

Where to stay

Like coworking, you won’t have a problem finding accommodation in Berlin. A quick Airbnb search will list many extremely affordable and hip options. I ended up staying at the super kind and friendly Ferdinand‘s place, which is only a few U-Bahn stops from Alexanderplatz (central).

You can also check out Airbnb-clone Wimdu for more listings.

In Berlin, gentrification is an ugly word so there are locations to stay in and there are locations to stay in. I’m trying to keep up with what’s what but let me just say, Berliners are pretty evangelical toward their suburb and prefer not to travel across town. If I have it right, Prenzlauer Berg was the place before it became baby town. So now it’s Kreuzberg, which is likely to be replaced by Neukölln. But alas, it’s mostly fun and games – I can tell you most places will be cheaper, cooler and closer than you have at home.

Startups to meet, people to remember

While there are always so many people to see and startups to talk about, I’m going to keep this quite brief!

  • SoundCloud are obviously killing it and must be seen as the success story of late from the Berlin community. Unfortunately Alex and I could never cross paths so I didn’t get to discover as much behind the scenes
  • 6Wunderkinder has quickly established itself as a serious and precise player in the productivity market with Wunderlist (over two million downloads), and there’s more the come with the Wunderkit. Thanks to Jess and Javier for a great chat, and to Christian for having me along
  • I’m really excited about Gidsy. While travelling, Mat and I constantly kept saying there should be a site for peer-to-peer local travel experiences. While Gidsy is broader in nature, be it an “authentic experience marketplace”, it’ll naturally cover travel and exploration. While it’s yet to launch, the way I think of it is as a Skillshare for everything (not just learning) and a less event-focused Meetup. I’m keen to see what Edial and the team do once launched
  • The Ashton-backed Amen has also got tongue’s wagging both in it’s private beta and now post-launch. Describing it via a blog post doesn’t really do it justice but it’s basically a platform for voicing strong opinions – including “the best and worst of everything”. Interestingly, Twitter’s first engineer is one of the founders. Aussie web guru Tim Lucas is also on the team as a lead developer after recently making the switch from Sydney. We really enjoyed hanging out with him and the lovely Carla during our stay! Thanks guys
  • OK, so you all know how much I love and bang on about Instagram. The only problem is it’s just available on the iPhone. Enter EyeEm – a photo capturing app that’s also Android base. Furthermore, Florian and the team have added a beautiful interface and additional social tools
  • For the social entrepreneurs among us, I also met Daniel from Doonited. This site encourages its users to do one small good deed a day. It seems there’s a new site every minute aiming to change the world through social but these guys are executing well
  • Another startup worth a look is social-reading platform Readmill. I gave my iPad to my mum so won’t be able to use the app for now, but from what I’ve seen so far – the experience is amazing
Now for some specific people:
  • A big mention to Dominik and Simon Wind of Palomar5 and Until We See New Land fame. These guys were so welcoming, kind, aware, intelligent and more – it was great to spend time with you! Be sure to say hello
  • Another mention to the lovely, smiling and social Svenja from Yelp Berlin – the person to know for eat/drink recommendations
  • And to Duana from ThoughtWorks for hosting us and watching me relive teenage years by playing too much Zelda

Away from it all

Now finally, if you want to get out of the city and switch off – here are three non-web activities:

  • Tempelhof: this airport closed in 2008 and has since managed to turn itself into a massive community urban garden with more planned. If you want to get the feeling of pure open space only minutes from the city centre, this is it. You can even hire a Segway to ride around the tarmac or gasp as the sheer size of the Nazi-era terminal.
  • Teufelsberg: this is one of the best non-tourist tourist things I’ve ever done. The abandoned post-Cold War US listening post features breathtaking view of the city, sweet-ass graffiti and scary shadows. We woke up at 5am on Mat’s birthday to catch the sunrise – I’d definitely recommend a visit although I’m not sure it’s technically permitted :)

Teufelsberg

  • Potsdam: OK, so this recommendation is more mainstream but worth it nevertheless. Especially for someone who appreciates history and palatial architecture. Hire a bike and ride around for the day, admiring the stunning lakes and ostentatious properties along the way.

So, that’s about it for Berlin. Oh, I nearly forgot the most important thing – don’t forget to eat lots of scrumptious German bread!

—

Apologies in advance if there’s anything or anyone I’ve missed. This post is a bit of a WIP and will likely be updated.

Would love you feedback on the usefulness of this as an introductory guide to Berlin too. Email me or leave a comment.

Cheers,

KK

Filed under Comment Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Social media introduction

July 22, 2011 Leave a comment

Friday morning @socialmelb gathering

A belated update with the final post from the StartupSmart email short course. The content serves as a brief introduction to the social space for entrepreneurs who may or may not be familiar with the online world. So, it’s not really intended for the guru expert child prodigies. And although written only a few months ago, it’s remarkable to see how some of the content, especially when referring to tech platforms, dates.

Social media

If there’s one area of the web that gets more attention than the latest celebrity socialite, it’s social media. Now blossoming from an awkward teen into a fully-fledged adult, social media is an increasingly powerful tool for start-up businesses.

The media ecosystem has evolved to include elements of real-time updates, co-created content and interactive dialogue.

According to Hitwise, Australia has one of the highest uptakes of social media in the world on a per capita basis. You’ve probably also heard the references to social media being about transparency and authenticity, but what about more tangible tools that can boost your website’s presence?

Social networking

If you’re considering dipping your toe into the waters of social media, Facebook is the network of choice. Setting up a page is useful for sharing information and connecting with your audience, no matter how niche.

It’s also great for search optimisation and driving website conversions. If you’re B2B or wanting to create industry-level conversation, LinkedIn works wonders. When operating in the global market, don’t forget to research what countries use what – Orkut, for example, is huge in Brazil and practically unheard of here.

Micro-sharing

The world is divided into two – those who get Twitter and those who wonder what’s the point. You might find it’s the third driver of traffic to your website or that you only get a handful of organic followers a month. Nevertheless, experiment. Yammer is popular within larger organisations as an international communication tool. If you have remote staff, take a look.

Blogging

Along with your website, blogs often act as the home of your social media strategy. With many platforms to choose from such as Blogger, WordPress, Posterous and Tumblr, getting something up and running can be relatively easy. It also gives a human, engaging face to your online activities.

Location-based services

One of the emerging areas of social media has been in geolocation. These services tag or track a user’s physical location via their mobile device. Foursquare and Facebook Places are some of the better known ones, with Gowalla and Google Latitude not too far behind. [Now with.me too]

Photography and video

There’s been an explosion in photo mobile applications of late and it doesn’t seem to be slowing down. Instagram, Path and the heavily-investor-backed Color all make use of a device’s camera and geolocator.

Brands are now starting to explore ways to engage with users in this format. The mainstay Flickr is also widely used as one of the “big four” (along with Facebook, Twitter and YouTube) to cast a visual to consumers. Don’t neglect video. YouTube and Vimeo are incredibly important social elements and livestreaming sites like Justin.tv, Ustream and Livestream are changing the way we communicate.

Events

Social media doesn’t just involve online engagement. The real connection and exchange comes through offline action. If you can inspire people to meet up face-to-face and attend self-organised events, you’ve built a serious community. Try Meetup, Eventbrite, Facebook Events, Amiando, Eventarc or Plancast to spread the word.

Virtual worlds and forums

A few years ago, when people thought of social networking they pictured games like Second Life or World of Warcraft as well as online forums. Both still have a massive role in the social media landscape. Check out PBWorks and Google Groups for discussion tool and make sure you keep an eye on what’s said about you on Wikipedia.

Measurement

Tools that evaluate the ROI of social media activities are constantly entering the market. For lean-yet-substantial awareness of how you’re tracking, use things like Google Analytics, conversation reply rates, platform keyword searches, subscriber numbers, Google Alerts, Facebook Insights, URL shorteners with counters, influencer scorers like Klout and so forth. If you’re looking to invest more into your monitoring, review what the plethora of paid services have on offer. Radian6, BuzzNumbers and BuzzMetrics are popular among web-savvy businesses.

Filed under Comment Tagged with , , , , , ,

Today I launched

March 22, 2011 7 Comments

Well, yesterday, considering it’s after midnight…

You’ll be pleased to know I finally launched The Fetch. The concept has been in slow ideation for just over six months – so, it felt good to hit send! I created The Fetch because I was finding it hard to keep up with all the happenings in Melbourne – especially in the meetup and event scene. There isn’t any central aggregation point for this information, and often it’s due to the agenda or affiliations of certain organisations – they have their biases and can’t be all things to all people. When an individual becomes the collaborative point, with a trust network already in place, it’s easier to share things among a community.

I also found I no longer cared for myopic industry silos; opening up conversation between different areas has such a positive impact on knowledge sharing and learning. The Fetch is interesting for anyone who can understand the world from a generalist perspective – someone who wants to be a well-rounded individual in work and life. Don’t get me wrong – specialist content offerings have, and will continue to have, their place in the business lanscape. It’s just that things have changed – we have changed. For instance, we aren’t 2D marketers, developers or lawyers anymore – we’re real people with diverse passions and interests. We’re not maths verse English – we’re art and science.

In each fetch (starting in Melbourne), you’ll find a definitive guide to the events for the fortnight ahead. There’ll also be news, jobs, people, places, spaces and more. I need to make some changes for the next curation but the following gives you a visual. Up next will be the website complete with calendar, listings and interviews. From there, we’ll say goodbye BETA mode.

I was grateful for the nice response online and feedback via email and in person. If one or two people loved and found it useful, I would have been pleased. And they did! I have included a selection of the tweets below – I especially like the last one, being a time optimisation fanatic myself. :)

Filed under Comment Tagged with , , , , , , , ,

How to organise your own meetup

July 25, 2010 1 Comment

2010 is certainly turning out to be the year of the meetup – particularly in Australia. If you’re a little unsure of what a ‘meetup’ actually is or involves, taking the literal meaning: a face-to-face encounter/connection from your average dictionary sheds the obvious light. Basically, it’s a gathering of people who come together to connect over a shared cause or passion – or even just for social purposes. Often attendees have never met each other before and usually there isn’t a charge for attending.

For those interested in starting a meetup of their own, I thought I would share some of my insights and advice from experience. Believe me, it’s very easy to start a meetup – the net is an amazing facilitator and there are practically no barriers to entry. The difficult part is running a meetup consistently over an extended period of time, offering unique experiences in a cluttered space and championing people to keep on coming back. There are a lot of organisers around Melbourne that do these things very well!

So, without further ado:

10 Meetup Organising Tips

1. First of all, starting a meetup is often the logical and organic progression of discovering a want or need that isn’t currently being met in your local area. Do you want to hang out with a bunch of people who knit? Do you want to swap comics? Do you want to chat business techniques with other freelancers? Do you want to meditate with others? Find the area you’re passionate about as your starting point. If you start your meetup for any other reason (e.g. self promotion or making money), people will see through it and are likely to not go along.

2. Research, research, research! Once you have your idea, check there’s not already a group out there doing exactly the same thing. I’ve witnessed people double up countless times because they didn’t research properly and it’s always better to work together than fragment further. This will also save a lot of time and energy in the long-term.

3. If you want to launch a ‘competing’ meetup – don’t! Well, that’s not always true… unless the pre-existing meetup is being poorly organised or isn’t servicing particular localities within your city/area – go for it! Often offshoots spring from the original meetup because the demand increases or the commute is too great for some attendees. This is completely natural and fine.

4. Build a community online first. As obvious as this sounds, to host a meetup – you need people! You need to find these people, connect with them and reach out to them with the idea of getting together offline. Don’t just whack a date in an online event program without building the community first. You need to breed and seed!

5. Use your tools wisely and don’t be tool myopic. By tools, I mean the tactical execution of media channels used – largely social networks. I recommend using a variety of them to reach your community. As hard as it may be to believe, there are a lot of people who don’t use Twitter, Facebook or even the web in general! Consider your audience – for instance, if you want to start a hiking or walking group, try reaching out in your local community newspapers or noticeboards first. Then encourage the group to communicate via online channels.

Some quick alternative resources = Meetup.com, Google Groups, Eventbrite, PBWorks, Yammer, Qlubb, my connect communities (a Vicnet initiative), Doodle, Amiando, group emails plus many more.

6. Make your meetup regular! Of course, you’re welcome to meetup only once but the real benefit of holding a meetup is to allow people to build amazing, ongoing relationships. This takes time and repeat encounters.

7. Have good intentions. I mentioned this briefly before, but starting and running a meetup is done on sweat equity – on passion. You’re welcome to make a meetup sustainable by charging an attendee fee if you have costs, but it’s rare that your community will allow you to monetise them for your gain. Especially without their knowledge or consent. If you want to make an income, consider running more of what I’d call ‘monologue’ style events. You provide a good or service to your audience that they deem valuable enough to pay for. As meetups are often about the ‘dialogue’ between group members, the value proposition is dispersed and therefore not necessarily owned by anyone.

8. Be inclusive! Successful meetups are open. Successful meetups want new attendees. Successful meetups want to expand their community. It’s amazing what effect the simple phrases: “all welcome” and “open invite” can have an a person. I’ve often not joined a meetup group or attended an event, because I felt the ethos was too exclusive. If you want to hang out with a group of mates – don’t promote the meetup or even call it a meetup for that matter!

9. Attend your meetup consistently. A no brainer, but if you can’t find the time or energy to attend yourself – why would anyone else?

10. Experiment with the style and frequency. Socialmelb started off with a weekly coffee, however many couldn’t attend… cough… hated the early mornings. So, we then started doing monthly dinners and are now trialling weekly after-work drinks. We also joined forces with Mashable for Worldwide Social Media Day, which saw 160 Melburnians come out from their winter caves.

Above all, have fun and be grateful for the opportunity to connect with awesome, like-minded people.

I hope to see you at your meetup sometime soon.

Kate

Filed under Comment Tagged with , , , , , , , , ,

Photoblogging foray

June 2, 2010 Leave a comment

I recently transferred my photoblogging platform of choice from Facebook to flickr. It’s ironic because Facebook’s schizophrenic privacy changes have actually instilled the desire for me to be more open elsewhere, and share my images with the universe – not just my friends. Like many digital citizens, I think I have developed a sharing compulsion – I can’t stop. It’s rather liberating, not to mention a great way to connect with like-minded individuals. I would like to believe it is helpful too. For instance, I uploaded a relatively mundane picture of my feet in white plimsolls last month, and it is one of my most viewed items. Weird, but obviously interesting or useful to others!

Anyway, I have started a set called ‘Project iPhone photo’, which you can view here. The premise is “Many days, many places, many people, many photos…” i.e. It’s highly likely you’ll end up featured in it one day!

I’ve also started uploading photos from the @socialmelb meetup here.

So, what’s next? Well, videoblogging of course. ;-)

Filed under Journal Tagged with , , , , , ,

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 34,687 other followers